For information or advice call 020 8763 9953 or email bernard@modernastronomy.com

Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

Modern Astronomy Ltd
Last Updated: 18 May 2018

1. Introduction 

Please read this policy before using our site, services, products. Modern Astronomy Ltd (“Company“, “we“, “us“) are committed to caring for, protecting and respecting your privacy and keeping your personal data secure.

We’ve also included some annotations that are intended to help you understand this somewhat technical document… for example:

The main goal of this Privacy Policy is to let you know we care about your data. We’re a small business but this doesn’t mean we do unlawful stuff with your personal details.

2. Who we are

We’re an online Astronomy retailer called Modern Astronomy Ltd – founded, run and managed by Bernard Karpinski.

Our physical address is: 60 Purley Bury Avenue, Purley, Surrey, CR8 1JD, UK

Our website address is: http://modernastronomy.com

Our email address is: info@modernastronomy.com

Please remember we’ve got personal data as well so please don’t use the above information for reasons unrelated to this privacy document. Thank you 

3. What personal data we collect and why

a) Comments and Profile Images

When visitors leave comments and feedback on the site we collect the data shown in the comment / feedback form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

b) Contact forms

Certain areas of the site use contact forms in order to generate an email message directed to us (and only us).

Contact forms capture personal data such as your name and email address, necessary to generate such email and allow for a smooth communication. Thankfully, that’s all we need and no unnecessary additional data is required from you.

Of course, and clearly, we do not use the information for marketing purposes.

c) Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment.

If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

d) Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, products, etc.) – embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

e) Analytics

When you use our site, our tracking service providers such as Google Analytics collect information using various technologies, including cookies and pixel tags (which are also called clear GIFs, web beacons, or pixels).

Cookies are small data files stored on your hard drive or in device memory that help us improve our  site and your experience, and track usage of our resources. These service providers may use cookies to collect and store information about your device, such as time of visit, pages visited, time spent on each page of the site, links clicked and conversion information, browser, mobile network information, and type of operating system used.

f) Billing / Shipping Information

If you purchase products or services on the site, we need to collect your billing/shipping information in order to generate an invoice.

g) social media

If you connect to Facebook from our site, the API will share data to our audience, as per your personal privacy setting

4. Who we share your data with

We do not sell our users’ private personal information. And we don’t give it away, either.

We share information about you in the limited circumstances spelled out below and with appropriate safeguards on your privacy:

Third Party Vendors: we may share information about you with third party vendors who need to know information about you in order to provide their services to us, to you or your site. For example: Sage Pay and PayPal to process your online payments, fraud prevention services to analyze payment transactions, Google Analytics, Akismet anti-spam services, and MailChimp email services to help us communicate with you.

Legal Requests: we may disclose information about you in response to a court order, or other governmental request.

Business Transfers: in connection with any merger, sale of company assets, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by another company, or in the unlikely event that Modern Astronomy Ltd goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information would likely be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. If any of these events were to happen, this Privacy Policy would continue to apply to your information and the party receiving your information may continue to use your information, but only consistent with this Privacy Policy.

With Your Consent: we may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction.

Aggregated or De-Identified Information: we may share information that has been aggregated or reasonably de-identified, so that the information could not reasonably be used to identify you. For instance, we may publish aggregate statistics about the use / sales of our products, de-identified screenshots or de-identified code snippets.

We don’t give your personal data to anyone, unless required by law or to allow you to pay online. Also (see next section), we retain data only because we have to…  accountants still require physical receipts!

5. How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website, we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit (except for your username), or delete their personal information at any time. Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

If you make a purchase, we retain your billing information and order details for at least 7 years – for accounting purposes.

Finally, we keep Google Analytics and other tracking data indefinitely, to allow for a smooth running of our business and compare analytics trends over the years.

6. What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us.

You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

On top of that, we recommend to follow these guidelines:

  • Limit the Information that You Provideg. don’t enter unnecessary personal data in the comments or contact form messages.
  • Opt-Out of Electronic Communications. You may opt out of receiving newsletters and promotional messages from us. Just follow the instructions in those messages. If you opt out of promotional messages, we may still send you other messages, like those about your account and legal notices.
  • Set Your Browser to Reject Cookies

Thankfully you have full control over your personal data you share on this site. We’re only an email away and you can even log in and delete your account. We hope not, but that’s your right and we respect it either way

7. Contact information

If you have a question about this Privacy Policy please contact us at info@modernastronomy.com

8 Privacy Policy Changes

We may modify this Policy from time to time. When we do, we will provide notice to you by publishing the most current version and revising the date at the top of this page. If we make any material change to this Policy, we will provide additional notice to you, such as by sending you an email, or displaying a prominent notice on our site. By continuing to use the site after any changes come into effect, you agree to the revised Policy.

That’s it! And thanks for reading

 

Modern Astronomy Ltd
Last Updated 24 May 2018